vibe coding

[ vahyb KOH-ding ]noun

Building software by describing what you want to an AI and taking what it gives you, without reading much of it line by line.

Explanation

Andrej Karpathy coined it in February 2025, in the spirit of giving in to the vibes and forgetting the code exists. He meant low-stakes weekend messing about. It has since been stretched over serious paid work, which is why about half of every argument about vibe coding is really an argument about the definition. Collins made it their 2025 Word of the Year. The same year, Merriam-Webster picked slop.

Related words

• the loop — The heart of vibe coding: ask, look at what came back, correct it, ask again, until it matches what you meant.
• vibe coader — Somebody who builds working software mostly by telling AI what to do, and takes full responsibility for the result anyway.
• vibe engineering — A proposed name for doing all of this properly: the same tools, but somebody actually reads the code.

Prompts that deal with it

• Explain It Like I Own It — For the builder who did not write the code